A blog for beginners in the creative space. Beginner to intermediate tips, tricks and tutorials on several Adobe products, especially After Effects, Premiere Pro and Photoshop. Who knows what else!

This company in your future camera?

While on my way to Photoshop World, I’m reading through the latest copy of Photoshop User magazine and came across a news blurb that might be significant for video and film people’s future. New technology isn’t that surprising to us – heck we’ve been going from DV to myriad other codecs including HDV, AVC-HD and DVCProHD and we’ve been moving from standard definition to high definition. What’s surprising here is the company that may be in your future. It’s Kodak…

Yup, that’s right, Kodak. They’ve developed and demonstrated a new sensor that does a number of things but most dramatically it increases the picture quality and allows users to capture more information in low light.

You really should read the press release for yourself, but my poor man’s understanding is that the new sensor has a new pixel on top of the RGB layer that collects all wavelengths of light providing a better image in low light and less blur for subjects in motion. It almost sounds like a luminance pixel, but that’s probably wrong.

Imagine HDV cameras with a sensor like this. If anything has stopped HDV as a replacement for DV, it has been its inability to capture a good image in low light. If the Kodak sensor is that good and can be incorporated into a Sony CMOS sensor, it might turn the format around. Now, with AVCHD coming on, I wonder if it might be too late for HDV.

Kodak will ship this new sensor in 2008 and it seems to indicate that it could license the technology to other companies. Anything that gives us more resolution, better light conditions, sharper image and hopefully lower cost is a good thing in my book. Bravo Kodak.